The Packers have released linebacker A.J. Hawk, who had a $10.5 million escalator clause in his contract that was due. Adam Schefter notes that the Packers may still pursue a deal at a reduced rate with Hawk.

UPDATE: The Packers have reportedly inked Hawk to a new five-year deal.

Posted by: Bill Barnwell on 02 Mar 2011

25 comments, Last at
05 Mar 2011, 8:51pm by
spenczar

Comments

Would this have happened if the labor deal wasn't going on? Hawk seems like a good player. I feel like the Packers are taking advantage of the limited player movement that is happening in the pre-lockout stages of the off-season.

10-1/2 million kick in--c'mon, that money was never going to be paid (even if he magically turned into Superman in the fourth quarter to save the game each week). Not to mention the salary cap implications. CBA existance or lack of makes no matter. Hawk made public overtures of his desire to stay there during most of last season as well. Player and team are a good match, but the contract's terms got in the way, temporarily.

Hawk is a liability in coverage and a poor pass rushing linebacker, so he doesn't really fit in a Dom Capers defense. His only saving grace was run support and pursuit ability (he chooses pretty good angles). He is probably average for starting ILB's in the league, but he's as good as he's going to get and he'll never be worth $10M.

Also, ILB's for a 3-4 defense are a dime a dozen. You can pick them up in the middle rounds of the draft for nuttin'.

other than punters, kickers, and fullbacks, there's no position in football that can be reliably acquired in the middle rounds. the whole "next man up" idea is a convenient fiction that hides the fact that good players are uncommon and tend to last a long time. bad players do frequently start for bad teams and occasionally for good teams, but they don't last long, and they're a huge liability.

Newman and Ricky Williams have performed far better in their careers, and Cadillac Williams has probably been less productive given his injuries. That said, comparing Hawk purely to #5 picks is not really a productive exercise given that there are different success/failure rates of top picks at different positions and ignoring those picked in a similar range (say #3-8) is unnecessarily diminishing your sample size. Traditionally top 10 non-passrusher LB picks are relatively low risk/low reward.

a couple of the guys you mentioned (poz, spikes, johnson) suck, and a couple of them were drafted by 4-3 teams (poz was drafted to be a 4-3 mike for a cover 2, derrick johnson was drafted to be a SLB for a cover 2, the best years of spikes career were when he played in the bills 4-3 in 2003 and 2004, and bart scott wasnt drafted high. or at all.

Case study of the Steelers: They got James Farrior, who is their highest-drafted player(!) on the roster, cheap from the Jets (don't remember if by trade or as a UFA), drafted Larry Foote in the fourth round, drafted Lawrence Timmons at around #16 (the very first new player of the Tomlin regime, second highest pick of the millennium after Roethlisberger), and drafted Stevenson Sylvester, originally an OLB in college, somewhere around the fifth round.
I think you could call that a mixture of very high importance players and developmental prospects. My assumption is that they want one exceptional player who can be LeBeau's 'coach on the field' (Farrior, soon Timmons) and one adequate, cheaper player (Foote, maybe Sylvester in the future).

here's a quick breakdown of, as best as a few minutes on wikipedia can tell, the draft position of the starting 3-4 linebackers in the nfl. We see, by round,
10 first round, 7 second round, 2 third round, one fourth round, and 6 undrafted free agents. I'm not sure if I missed anyone or incorrectly included anyone because this might reflect depth chart changes due to free agency.

Still, when we look at it, it appears to be pretty clear to me that nfl teams don't think inside linebackers can be easily found outside of the first 2 rounds because they continue spending top picks on inside linebackers and almost never start middle-round picks. Even if there are a number of players who were originally in 4-3 defenses, the fact that teams are going to those same highly drafted players to fill 3-4 inside linebacker posts, particularly given that a large number of these players were re-signed or acquired later in their careers as free agents specifically to play in the 3-4 of their current teams, strongly suggests that the paul posluszny effect is small.

The large number of undrafted free agents might be one reason why it can be suggested that these players are available late, but I strongly suspect this result is due to 2 factors. 1) the ravens are just strange. 2) there are so many undrafted free agents that we should expect a few to slip through the cracks even though the success rate is abysmally low. It's also notable that even the 3 guys listed from the third and fourth round suck (bradie james, akin ayodele) or were top talents who nonetheless had major issues coming out of college (crowder).

Barnett was a better player. But he's been seriously injured 2 of the last 3 years and is older than Hawk. They may carry both Hawk and Barnett, but I think they'll keep Bishop, Hawk, and Chillar, then either use a low draft pick or find a cheap FA (rookie or vet) for reserve and special teams.

Hawk also hasn't been knocked out of the lineup much due to injury. I think that was his deal coming out of OSU, he'd never missed so much as a practice. He's gotten nicked up a bit in GB, but overall is pretty reliable. Now I've just jinxed the shit out of him.